renewable energy

Mt. Tom’s owners announced this summer that they would retire the 54-year-old coal plant, and yesterday, GDF Suez filed the official request with the electric system operator to retire this last Massachusetts coal-fired power plant by June 2018. This is great news for the residents who have breathed the pollution from Mt. Tom since it first…

The ISO is the organization that operates the New England-wide electricity grid and runs New England’s wholesale electricity markets. You can read more about what the ISO is, and why CLF works on ISO committees and working groups. I have written before about CLF’s work with the ISO. You can read those prior blog posts…

Everyone’s heard someone claim that renewable energy is too expensive. This criticism often overlooks one of the most important benefits of renewable energy – not the environmental benefits (which are also very important!) but the price-suppression benefits. CLF is an active participant in the ISO-NE, and, as such, we get to see some of the…

As the New England Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers gather in Bretton Woods for their annual conference next week, it’s likely there will be much discussion of building new transmission lines to enable additional imports of Canadian hydropower into New England. Indeed, financing such transmission lines is the centerpiece of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s…

In January, the New England Governors announced a plan to finance new gas pipelines and electric transmission lines across the region with billions of dollars in funding from residents and businesses. In an effort to bring transparency to the process that led to and continues to inform the Governors’ plan, in March, Conservation Law Foundation…

A few days ago, I posted a blog on CLF’s website about a newly published study that quantifies the economic-development benefits of renewable energy Distributed Generation (DG). You can read that earlier blog post, here. In my prior blog, I quoted from the executive summary of the DG Study that said: “The study finds that…

See the first set of documents we have received in response to our public records requests and our briefing of our findings, available here. Today (March 19, 2014) CLF filed Public Records requests with State Agencies across New England and with the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) that is acting on behalf of…

In a sweeping decision issued today, a federal court in the nation’s capitol ruled against Bill Koch’s Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and other Cape Wind opponents on a series of claims they had brought against the nation’s first offshore wind project. The decision is a significant milestone for the 130-turbine Cape Wind project, which…

The first public hearing on the new Distributed Generation Bill, S-2690, was held today in the Senate Committee on the Environment and Agriculture; the hearing was an unalloyed success. You can see background information on the DG Bill in my February 28 blog post. The hearing was held in one of the largest rooms in…

There was a moment about ten years ago when the building of wind energy facilities, and in particular offshore wind farms, was just getting going in Europe and it appeared that the United States, and New England in particular, would not be far behind. The Horns Rev project in Denmark was brand new and the…